{"id":3374,"date":"2007-01-20T00:15:20","date_gmt":"2007-01-20T00:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/unchained.html"},"modified":"2007-01-20T00:15:20","modified_gmt":"2007-01-20T00:15:20","slug":"unchained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/unchained.html","title":{"rendered":"Unchained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via the Fides News Service – the news service for the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples<\/a> (which you should bookmark), I saw a brief story about the Saint Camillo Association <\/a> in Benin and the Ivory Coast. Started by a layman named Gregoire Ahongbonon, it is dedicated primarily to serving the mentally ill, those who have been marginalized by their own communities, suspect of being possessed and sometimes confined in extreme ways:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The purpose of the programme is to support the extraordinary humanitarian<\/strong> work carried out by Gregoire Ahongbonon and by the Association that he founded, the "Saint Camille de Lellis" association at Porto-Novo in Benin, which is engaged in physically liberating, caring for and re-integrating into society mental health sufferers who are considered to have been "invaded by evil spirits" and so chained to trees, shackled in their own homes, abandoned in the streets.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

His story:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Saint Camille de Lellis Association in Bouake was formed in 1983 as a result of the work of Gregoire Ahongbonon.
Gregoire was born in Benin, he is married and has six children. He has worked as a tyre mechanic and has operated a taxi service.<\/p>\n

An "all round" Christian, he started to take an interest in the mentally ill after going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1982 and hearing a priest ask, during a sermon: "what stone are you carrying to build Christ’s Church?".<\/p>\n

This question, to a sensitive soul made even more aware by a severe personal existential crisis that he was going through, literally changed his life. Back in Bouake in fact, as he was driving along the road, Gregoire noticed a person wandering about looking for food completely naked.<\/p>\n

He went up to this person and realised that he was \u201cmentally ill\u201d and had, because of this sick condition, been cast out from society.<\/p>\n

This was the spark that ignited his interest because these people were no longer regarded as men but as "garbage", "trash", as people no longer worthy of respect.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The care and attention that Gregoire shows for other people all stems from a religious reawakening in which the sufferer represents for him the face of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ who he had been searching after for such a long time and who, in the end, manifested himself in the most abandoned and vilified type of people, who African culture continues to cast out.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via the Fides News Service – the news service for the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (which you should bookmark), I saw a brief story about the Saint Camillo Association in Benin and the Ivory Coast. 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